shaped by pain, shaped by love
Shaped by news headlines?
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It’s Monday morning - and, the title of the first news headline that I read is an emphatic love wins. The Supreme Court has chosen to not revisit same-sex marriage. My limbs tingle with joy. I make a post. Good persists.
Something is going right.
A few minutes later I return to the scroll. The second news headline reads, “Over a Third of LGBTQ+ Youth Do Not Believe They Will Live Past 35.” And, I am quickly pushed to the edge of my cloud. What will I choose to look at, to move toward, to believe?
When grief comes to call
Grief is adept at tending to us through questions. She notes the internal shift towards her. Asks us over and over again, must I sit with this?
I don’t want to be a part of the glossing-over of terrible, bad, and very hard things. This, I have known since my own children were tiny babes and my soul was war-torn. Standing on a precarious line between my own lineage of ancestral trauma and abuse and the possibility that I could actually be a decent mother. In those early parenting years, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I was pulled in the direction to share my experience of spirituality, mental wellness, and motherhood. It touched thousands of lives. It touched my own.
This morning, I see clearly first-hand how grief collides with us. Makes her home in our hearts. But also, saves them too. If we sit with it long enough.
A quick jaunt through the comment section (of the second article) points out the good that persists - dozens of blessed souls have outlived this internalized, valid, idea that there is a death sentence attached to gender and sexuality. I am grateful to read those hope-filled words. I am grateful that these people remain alive. Countless alarmist headlines get inside of us. Trick us into believing that once we know pain, we are irreversibly shaped by it. The way that the media has covered perinatal mental health over the years will forever be ingrained in my brain. As if the mother is at fault. Even the media that is meant specifically to support a movement seems to have this negative bias. They condition the body, mind, spirit to wait for the other shoe to drop. To become more deeply entwined with our pain.
With every sentence written and read - whether a tangible headline or in the cells of our precious bodies - we are given a choice of what we move toward, beloved.
Shaped by pain… shaped by love
While not every comment section will supply us with hope, my hope-seeking behaviors were rewarded today.
I could meet the moment with a bent toward possibility and potential.
As I’ve become more and more intentional with the repatterning of my mind (treating my sensitive wiring with a thoughtfulness and care), at every pain-centered fork in the road I ask myself -
What do I want to look at?
What do I want to see?
What can I move toward that feels more like possibility and potential?
Where is joy; hope?
It’s become less about scanning the horizons for unsafety and more about being fully with any opportunity that can arise in this moment. I feel fairly certain that if I had lingered in that comment section long enough, I could have found anything. If I had been looking for stories of love-turned-to-loss - they would absolutely be there. I have no doubts.
And, what good would that have done me?
Having a wide net of LGBTQ+ family and friends and having stood at the periphery as a questioning person since the beginning of my time on earth, I already know the pain in this space is significant. It is valid. It is not, however, what I think is most important for me to focus on right now. Instead, my eyes linger on hope ropes and success stories.
What do you really want, darling?
At the core of it all, we are returning to the story of two wolves.
The one we feed determines the path.
Are we shaped by pain? Yes. There is an African proverb that says, “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”
Are we shaped by love? Also, a resounding yes. The Masai people are known for their (and one of my favorite) questions. The best of them - “and how are the children?” It is said that when a child makes a mistake, they are brought to the center of the village and life is quite literally spoken into their life. Reminders of their goodness are proclaimed out loud. Invitations to return to the love that they already are, are placed upon the table of their hearts.
I think about this daily.
We can be shaped by almost anything.
It would be wise to consider this each and every day.
What will you be shaped by, darling? How will you reshape the world?
As always, I am so honored to be here with you.
ILYSM,
J. Magnano
New here? This is a safe space for new and life-long grievers as well as the people who tend to grief on the regular. Our beliefs are simple - grief is love, good/God cannot be contained inside any one box, the children are all ours, and individual liberation is not independent from collective liberation.
